Homeland Elegies
Ratings20
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings20
Average rating4.3
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Disgraced and author of American Dervish, an American son and his immigrant father search for belonging -- in post-Trump America, and with each other. Homeland Elegies is an astonishing and deeply personal work about hope and identity in a nation coming apart at the seams. Drawn from Akhtar's life as the son of Muslim immigrants, it blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure -- at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home. Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a nation in which debt has ruined countless lives and our ideals have been sacrificed to the gods of finance, where a TV personality is president and immigrants live in fear, and where the unhealed wounds of 9/11 continue to wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Davos to guerilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan. All the while, he spares no one -- neither himself, nor his loved ones, nor his fellow Americans -- any indignity in order to make better sense of it all.
Reviews with the most likes.
Homeland Elegies is a post-9/11, post-Trump Muslim-American manifesto. I could never claim to know the experience of being Muslim in our country, but I think this book does a fantastic job of fleshing out nuanced, complicated feelings regarding a nuanced, complicated identity. The choice to make this read like a memoir only adds to the effect. In fact, I thought this was a memoir until about halfway through (love that shit) – the author does a good job of making it very convincing, and feeling like you're reading a first-hand account makes it easy to empathize, or at least sympathize, with the experience. There are some interesting dissertations/opinions on the topic of the American sociopolitical climate that lead to Trump's rise, and many scenarios of overt racism (borderline hate crimes) towards Muslim Americans/people of southeast asian or middle eastern descent that are automatically assumed Muslim that feels way too real. The ending really smacks you in the chest. Definitely worth a read, if you're into this kind of thing.
I'm always a little leery of autofiction, and this was the sort that I tend to find irritating (where the memoir-esque elements are very strong). And while I understand the vignette-type structure, I rarely enjoy reading it and that held true here as well.
A novel that reads like a memoir, and who knows what's fact and what's fiction? In any case, it's fascinating, beautifully written, and incredibly insightful.
Despite the narrator also being a Muslim-American, son of Pakistani doctors, Pulitzer Prize-winning author named Ayad Akhtar, the author Ayad Akhtar is adamant that this is a novel not an autobiography. I get it. No doubt after the acclaim of his play Disgraced, Akhtar probably tired of being asked if he, like his character Amir, felt a blush of pride after the events of 9/11. Surely he must have been writing himself on the page. Best to leave yourself a little wiggle room for subsequent novels and avoid that altogether.
What Akhtar is doing is nothing short of an examination of our current reality in the midst of the Trumpian era. Rampant capitalism, the elimination of checks on private enterprise, the financialization of modern medicine, college as a customer experience, the stock market as an unregulated casino, the warping effect of massive wealth and the strange appeal of Donald Trump for so many unlikely folks. And somehow this sad parade of modern travails is wrapped in a story that is as edifying as it is entertaining.
It's a warts and all approach that includes some unflattering relationships with women and his clear seduction by fame and wealth. But all of it is in service to unveiling certain truths - to me it reads like a book from Malcolm Gladwell adapted for the stage. (I assure you the end result is immensely better than the prior sentence might have you believe.)
